


This Second Skin

by riversfire



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Drinking, Drunk Sex, Dubious Consent, Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts, Heavy Drinking, Incest, M/M, Post-Stanford, Pre-Hell, Sibling Incest, Wincest - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-02
Updated: 2016-10-02
Packaged: 2018-08-19 01:58:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8184718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riversfire/pseuds/riversfire
Summary: It started in a bar. It always started in a bar. Everything worth doing, that was. Or as Dean would say, everyone.In the dim red glow of a blinking neon sign, Sam watched his brother drink the bar rats under the table. He wondered vaguely when Dean had become this. If Dean was supposed to be leading by example, Sam wasn’t sure how things were going to end up. He didn’t know then how important of a question that was.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This story is based entirely on a poem called [“You Are Jeff”](http://youngerpoets.yupnet.org/2008/04/17/you-are-jeff-crush-by-richard-siken/) by Richard Siken, which is very messed up and extremely beautiful, as well as somewhat terrifying. Basically all the good parts of this are lifted directly from that. I’m serious. This is almost more a fanfiction of that poem than it is a fanfiction of Supernatural. I used a lot of direct quotes. A lot. I want to give him the credit he deserves. You should probably go read the poem. I have never written wincest before and I don’t generally read it or ship it either, but I just felt it so fully in this poem that I decided to give it a go. I’m fairly sure that this is not what the author of the poem had in mind, but it spoke to me. So here.

It started in a bar. 

It always started in a bar. Everything worth doing, that was. Or as Dean would say, everyone.

In the dim red glow of a blinking neon sign, Sam watched his brother drink the bar rats under the table. He wondered vaguely when Dean had become this. If Dean was supposed to be leading by example, Sam wasn’t sure how things were going to end up. He didn’t know then how important of a question that was.

Dean, for his part, had always taken the responsibility upon himself as the older brother to show little Sammy the ropes. Get money for him to spend on his books and magic tricks, give him the occasional punch on the shoulder like big brothers are supposed to. But he never fancied himself a good example. I may be dumb, but I’m not delusional, Dean would say. Some others might say it wasn’t his place to decide that. But it didn’t matter. Not to Dean, who was young and the type of person who will always win when it all comes down to fisticuffs. Unfortunately for him, it doesn’t always all come down to fisticuffs.

Not even when it does.

That night, Sam and Dean were at a trashy bar across the street from their trashier motel. It was dark and they were both alone. Dean was drinking whiskey like he was drowning in river water and Sam was just behind the hairpin turn, so-to-speak.

The life really starts to wear on you after a while. Any life does, probably, but this one especially.

Dean was chatting up a blonde at the bar while Sam hung back at a corner booth, watching. The girl’s hair was long and dirty blond and fell into lazy waves across her shoulders and down her slender back and he couldn’t help but follow her with his eyes. He’d clocked her as soon as he sat down, if he was being honest. And he was a little too drunk not to be honest. It wasn’t because she was pretty, though she was. It was her eyes. They were brown. Every time Sam caught sight of her face he expected them to be blue but they weren’t. She was wrong. She didn’t really look that much like Jess at all but Sam couldn’t seem to keep his eyes away. Halfway through Dean and Sam’s third round of drinks Dean had got fed up with Sam’s absent staring and asked if he was going to hit that. Sam shot him a look and shook his head, so Dean downed a shot and went to claim her for himself.

So Sam sat and watched. He knew Dean knew he would and so he did. Sam had always watched Dean. It was how it was and how it always would be. He knew that, as he knew now that Dean was showing him how world-wise he had become in their time apart.

As Sam watched he thought about how beautiful they were together. Dean’s face was coyly hidden by her hair as he whispered into her ear. When she ducked her face in gentle laughter he followed her down, the pretty curve of his neck accentuated by the dim and smoky light that seemed to follow him. Sam recognized that Dean was the type of boy you could love with all your heart. He began to expect that he would have to sleep in the car.

So he was surprised when he came back to his table after getting more drinks to find Dean sprawled cockily across the seat there alone. The girl had gone, left Dean with her number and his lust. It was fine, he said. She wasn’t the type for drunken hook-ups it seemed, which meant not his type. And it was fine, except that when Dean smiled Sam could see the fire of dissatisfaction hiding behind his eyes. 

Dean was the type that needed release after a tough hunt. So it was decidedly not a surprise when he got into a fight hustling pool some hour later with a man who was large but no match for the man that Dean had become. They had to leave quick after that. Dean’s energy was high and reckless but not so much that he ran out breathless with laughter like he did when he was younger. Instead he walked out head high and world-weary.

He didn’t stop until he made it to their room, though the night air punched through his stomach and the blood dried cold on his skin. Sam scurried to follow, closing the motel door softly behind him like Dean was an animal to be appeased. And he was.

Dean rounded on Sam anyway, asking why didn’t you have my backs and where were yous like he was still talking about some paltry barfight. But this wasn’t that. No, this was a long time coming. Maybe since Stanford, maybe since he was four years old and his childhood got lost in a fire. 

Sam stared, wanting nothing but to put his brother back together. In his drunken haze it was the light he clung to. He would unravel himself if it meant he had the string to stitch him up, he knew. And so he crossed the room and knelt before his brother on the bed of their seedy motel room and touched his bloodied cheek with all the grace he could find. He knelt next to his brother, telling him he’s home. Right next to him. So close. But they weren’t. They were two wrenches spinning in the ordinary air.

And then Sam kissed him.

And Dean kissed back.

They were both drunk, and trembling, and still they had never experienced anything this ferocious or intentional with another person. 

Dean became a devouring mouth, swallowing everything Sam would give him. He wanted to take Sam apart, and slowly, deft fingers searching every shank and lock for weaknesses, dragging out the moans like secrets from his skin. 

Sam wanted to tell Dean everything, so he kissed him harder.

He made himself into the shape of everything Dean needed. And then he made Dean, too.

Their movements lived somewhere between memory and fantasy. In the dark they could barely tell whose hands were whose. In the dark neither could tell if the hand on him was the Hand of Judgment or the Hand of Mercy. There were suddenly too many hands for it to matter very much. Hands of fire, hands of air, hands of water, hands of dirt, it didn’t matter.

The dark hotel became a tabernacle for whatever it was. Because this is how you make the meaning, you take two things and try to define the space between them. They raced to the answer; neck and neck and cheek to cheek.

And chest to chest, they drew the covers around them like an act of faith against the night.

Sam took the light inside him like a blessing, like a knee in the chest, and held on. After, they clung to each other like they hadn’t since they were kids—when Sam refused to sleep alone for weeks after he found out the truth about the monsters under the bed.

Now it was sleep that refused them both, and they lay awake for hours, Dean’s face in the crook of Sam’s neck and his fingers in his hair.

Sam stared at the ceiling, not wanting to let go and thinking I’ve swallowed a bad thing and now it’s got its hands inside me. This is the essence of love and failure. He saw it but he was happy anyway, and that was okay. If it was a love story after all, it would be a lasting love.

Dean stared at Sam, thinking I just wanted to prove there was one safe place, just one safe place where I could love him. He knew he had not found that place yet. He had not made that place yet. But he thought to himself I am here. You are here. You’re still right here.

When sleep finally let them in, they dreamed of nothing but each other.

Sam dreamed of Dean calling out to him, saying hold onto your voice. Hold onto your breath. Don’t make a noise, don’t leave the room until I come back from the dead for you. I will come back from the dead for you. He said Sam, this could be a city. This could be a graveyard, Sam.

Dean dreamed of a car and a beautiful boy. And Sam wouldn’t tell him that he loved him, but he loved him. And Dean felt like he’d done something terrible like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled himself a grave in the dirt, and he was tired. And he was in a car with his beautiful boy, and he was trying not to tell him that he loved him, and he was trying to choke down the feeling, and he was trembling, but Sam reached over and he touched him, like a prayer for which no words exist, and he felt his heart taking root in his body, like he’d discovered something he didn’t even have a name for.

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on tumblr at [lunellumcas](http://www.lunellumcas.tumblr.com) if you want.


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